Charmed Life

by Diana Wynne Jones

  Cat did not answer. He was too busy clinging to Gwendolen. They were being arranged around a long polished table, and if anyone had tried to put Cat in a chair that was not next to Gwendolen’s, he thought he would have fainted from terror. Luckily, no one tried. Even so, the meal was terrifying enough. Footmen kept pushing delicious food in silver plates over Cat’s left shoulder. Each time that happened, it took Cat by surprise, and he jumped and jogged the plate. He was supposed to help himself off the silver plate, and he never knew how much he was allowed to take. But the worst difficulty was that he was left-handed. The spoon and fork that he was supposed to lift the food with from the footman’s plate to his own were always the wrong way around. He tried changing them over, and dropped a spoon. He tried leaving them as they were, and spilled gravy. The footman always said, “Not to worry, sir,” and made him feel worse than ever.

  The conversation was even more terrifying. At one end of the table, the small loud man talked endlessly of stocks and shares. At Cat’s end, they talked about Art. Mr. Saunders seemed to have spent the summer traveling abroad. He had seen statues and paintings all over Europe and much admired them. He was so eager that he slapped the table as he talked. He spoke of Studios and Schools, Quattrocento and Dutch Interiors, until Cat’s head went around. Cat looked at Mr. Saunders’ thin, square-cheeked face and marveled at all the knowledge behind it. Then Millie and Chrestomanci joined in. Millie recited a string of names Cat had never heard in his life before. Chrestomanci made comments on them, as if these names were intimate friends of his. Whatever the rest of the Family was like, Cat thought, Chrestomanci was not ordinary. He had very black bright eyes, which were striking even when he was looking vague and dreamy. When he was interested—as he was about Art—the black eyes screwed up in a way that seemed to spill the brightness of them over the rest of his face. And, to Cat’s dismay, the two children were equally interested. They kept up a mild chirp, as if they actually knew what their parents were talking about.

  Cat felt crushingly ignorant. What with this talk, and the trouble over the suddenly appearing silver plates, and the dull biscuits he had eaten for tea, he found he had no appetite at all. He had to leave half his ice-cream pudding. He envied Gwendolen for being able to sit so calmly and scornfully, enjoying her food.

  It was over at last. They were allowed to escape up to her upholstered bed with a bounce.

  “What a childish trick!” she said. “They were showing off just to make us feel small. Mr. Nostrum warned me they would. It’s to disguise the thinness of their souls. What an awful, dull wife! And did you ever see anyone so plain and stupid as those two children! I know I’m going to hate it here. This Castle’s crushing me already.”

  “It may not be so bad once we get used to it,” Cat said, without hope.

  “It’ll be worse,” Gwendolen promised him. “There’s something about this Castle. It’s a bad influence, and a deadness. It’s squashing the life and the witchcraft out of me. I can hardly breathe.”

  “You’re imagining things,” said Cat, “because you want to be back with Mrs. Sharp.” And he sighed. He missed Mrs. Sharp badly.

  “No, I’m not imagining it,” said Gwendolen. “I should have thought it was strong enough even for you to feel. Go on, try. Can’t you feel the deadness?”

  Cat did not really need to try, to see what she meant. There was something strange about the Castle. He had thought it was simply that it was so quiet. But it was more than that: there was a softness to the atmosphere, a weightiness, as if everything they said or did was muffled under a great feather quilt. Normal sounds, like their two voices, seemed thin. There were no echoes to them. “Yes, it is queer,” he agreed.

  “It’s more than queer—it’s terrible,” said Gwendolen. “I shall be lucky if I survive.” Then she added, to Cat’s surprise, “So I’m not sorry I came.”

  “I am,” said Cat.

  “Oh, you would need looking after!” said Gwendolen. “All right. There’s a pack of cards on the dressing table. They’re for divination, really, but if we take the trumps out we can use them to play Snap with, if you like.”

  4

  T HE SAME SOFTNESS and silence were there when the red-haired Mary woke Cat the next morning and told him it was time to get up. Bright morning sunshine was flooding the curved walls of his room. Though Cat knew now that the Castle must be full of people, he could hear not a sound from any of them. Nor could he hear anything from outside the windows.

  I know what it’s like! Cat thought. It’s like when it’s snowed in the night. The idea made him feel so pleased and so warm that he went to sleep again.

  “You really must get up, Eric,” Mary said, shaking him. “I’ve run your bath, and your lessons start at nine. Make haste, or you won’t have time for breakfast.”

  Cat got up. He had so strong a feeling that it had snowed in the night that he was quite surprised to find his room warm in the sun. He looked out of the windows, and there were green lawns and flowers, and rooks circling the green trees, as if there had been some mistake. Mary had gone. Cat was glad, because he was not at all sure he liked her, and he was afraid of missing breakfast. When he was dressed, he went along to the bathroom and let the hot water out of the bath. Then he dashed down the twisting stairs to find Gwendolen.

  “Where do we go for breakfast?” he asked her anxiously.

  Gwendolen was never at her best in the morning. She was sitting on her blue velvet stool in front of her garlanded mirror, crossly combing her golden hair. Combing her hair was another thing which always made her cross. “I don’t know and I don’t care! Shut up!” she said.

  “Now that’s no way to speak,” said the maid called Euphemia, briskly following Cat into the room. She was rather a pretty girl, and she did not seem to find her name the burden it should have been. “We’re waiting to give you breakfast along here. Come on.”

  Gwendolen hurled her comb down expressively and they followed Euphemia to a room just along the corridor. It was a square, airy room, with a row of big windows but, compared with the rest of the Castle, it was rather shabby. The leather chairs were battered. The grassy carpet had stains on it. None of the cupboards would shut properly. Things like clockwork trains and tennis rackets bulged out. Julia and Roger were sitting waiting at a table by the windows, in clothes as shabby as the room.

  Mary, who was waiting there too, said, “And about time!” and began to work an interesting lift in a cupboard by the fireplace. There was a clank. Mary opened the lift and fetched out a large plate of bread and butter and a steaming brown jug of cocoa. She brought these over to the table and Euphemia poured each child a mug of the cocoa.

  Gwendolen stared from her mug to the plate of bread. “Is this all there is?”

  “What else do you want?” asked Euphemia.

  Gwendolen could not find words to express what she wanted. Porridge, bacon and eggs, grapefruit, toast and kippers all occurred to her at once, and she went on staring.

  “Make up your mind,” Euphemia said at last. “My breakfast’s waiting for me too, you know.”

  “Isn’t there any marmalade?” said Gwendolen.

  Euphemia and Mary looked at one another. “Julia and Roger are not allowed marmalade,” Mary said.

  “Nobody forbade me to have it,” said Gwendolen. “Get me some marmalade at once.”

  Mary went to a speaking tube by the lift and, after much rumbling and another clank, a pot of marmalade arrived. Mary brought it and put it in front of Gwendolen.

  “Thank you,” Cat said fervently. He felt as strongly about it as Gwendolen—more, in fact, because he hated cocoa.

  “Oh, no trouble, I’m sure!” Mary said, in what was certainly a sarcastic way, and the two maids went out.

  For a while, nobody said anything. Then Roger said to Cat, “Pass the marmalade, please.”

  “You’re not supposed to have it,” said Gwendolen, whose tempe
r had not improved.

  “Nobody will know if I use one of your knives,” Roger said placidly.

  Cat passed him the marmalade and his knife too. “Why aren’t you allowed it?”

  Julia and Roger looked at one another in a mild, secretive way. “We’re too fat,” Julia said, calmly taking the knife and the marmalade after Roger had done with them. Cat was not surprised when he saw how much marmalade they had managed to pile on their bread. Marmalade stood on both slices like a sticky brown cliff.

  Gwendolen looked at them with disgust, and then, rather complacently, down at her trim linen dress. The contrast was certainly striking. “Your father is such a handsome man,” she said. “It must be such a disappointment to him that you’re both pudgy and plain, like your mother.”

  The two children looked at her placidly over their cliffs of marmalade. “Oh, I wouldn’t know,” said Roger.

  “Pudgy is comfortable,” said Julia. “It must be a nuisance to look like a china doll, the way you do.”

  Gwendolen’s blue eyes glared. She made a small sign under the edge of the table. The bread and thick marmalade whisked itself from Julia’s hands and slapped itself on Julia’s face, marmalade side inward. Julia gasped a little. “How dare you insult me!” said Gwendolen.

  Julia peeled the bread slowly off her face and then fumbled out a handkerchief. Cat supposed she was going to wipe her face. But she let the marmalade stay where it was, trundling in blobs down her plump cheeks, and simply tied a knot in the handkerchief. She pulled the knot slowly tight, looking meaningly at Gwendolen while she did so. With the final pull, the half-full jug of cocoa shot steaming into the air. It hovered for a second, and then shot sideways to hang just above Gwendolen’s head. Then it began to joggle itself into tipping position.

  “Stop it!” gasped Gwendolen. She put up a hand to ward the jug off. The jug dodged her and went on tipping. Gwendolen made another sign and gasped out strange words. The jug took not the slightest notice. It went on tipping until cocoa was brimming in the very end of its spout. Gwendolen tried to lean out sideways away from it. The jug simply joggled along in the air until it was hanging over her head again.

  “Shall I make it pour?” Julia asked. There was a bit of a smile under the marmalade.

  “You dare!” screamed Gwendolen. “I’ll tell Chrestomanci on you! I’ll—oh!” She sat up straight again, and the jug followed her faithfully. Gwendolen made another grab at it, and it dodged again.

  “Careful. You’ll make it spill. And what a shame about your pretty dress,” Roger said, watching complacently.

  “Shut up, you!” Gwendolen shouted at him, leaning out the other way so that she was nearly in Cat’s lap. Cat looked up nervously as the jug came and hovered over him too. It seemed to be going to pour.

  But, at that moment, the door opened and Chrestomanci came in, wearing a flowered silk dressing gown. It was a red and purple dressing gown, with gold at the neck and sleeves. It made Chrestomanci look amazingly tall, amazingly thin, and astonishingly stately. He could have been an emperor, or a particularly severe bishop. He was smiling as he came in, but the smile vanished when he saw the jug.

  The jug tried to vanish too. It fled back to the table at the sight of him, so quickly that cocoa slopped out of it onto Gwendolen’s dress—which may or may not have been an accident. Julia and Roger both looked stricken. Julia unknotted her handkerchief as if for dear life.

  “Well, I was coming in to say good morning,” Chrestomanci said. “But I see that it isn’t.” He looked from the jug to Julia’s marmalade-glistening cheeks. “If you two ever want to eat marmalade again,” he said, “you’d better do as you’re told. And the same goes for all four of you.”

  “I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Gwendolen said, as if butter—not to speak of marmalade—would not have melted in her mouth.

  “Yes, you were,” said Roger.

  Chrestomanci came to the end of the table and stood looking down on them, with his hands in the pockets of his noble robe. He looked so tall like that that Cat was surprised that his head was still under the ceiling. “There’s one absolute rule in this Castle,” he said, “which it will pay you all to remember. No witchcraft of any kind is to be practiced by children, unless Michael Saunders is here to supervise you. Have you understood, Gwendolen?”

  “Yes,” said Gwendolen. She gripped her lips together and clenched her hands, but she was still shaking with rage. “I refuse to keep such a silly rule!”

  Chrestomanci did not seem to hear, or to notice how angry she was. He turned to Cat. “Have you understood too, Eric?”

  “Me?” Cat said in surprise. “Yes, of course.”

  “Good,” said Chrestomanci. “Now I will say good morning.”

  “Good morning, Daddy,” said Julia and Roger. “Er—good morning,” Cat said. Gwendolen pretended not to hear. Two could play at that game. Chrestomanci smiled and swept out of the room like a very long procession of one person.

  “Telltale!” Gwendolen said to Roger, as soon as the door had shut. “And that was a dirty trick with that jug! You were both doing it, weren’t you?”

  Roger smiled sleepily, not in the least disturbed. “Witchcraft runs in our family,” he said.

  “And we’ve both inherited it,” said Julia. “I must go and wash.” She picked up three slices of bread to keep her going while she did so, and left the room, calling over her shoulder, “Tell Michael I won’t be long, Roger.”

  “More cocoa?” Roger said politely, picking up the jug.

  “Yes, please,” said Cat. It never bothered him to eat or drink things that had been bewitched, and he was thirsty. He thought that if he filled his mouth with marmalade and strained the cocoa through it, he might not taste the cocoa. Gwendolen, however, was sure Roger was trying to insult her. She flounced around in her chair and stayed haughtily looking at the wall until Mr. Saunders suddenly threw open a door Cat had not noticed before and said cheerfully:

  “Right, all of you. Lesson time. Come on through and see how you stand up to some grilling.”

  Cat hastily swallowed his cocoa-flavored marmalade. Beyond the door was a schoolroom. It was a real, genuine schoolroom, although there were only four desks in it. There was a blackboard, a globe, the pitted school floor, and the schoolroom smell. There was that kind of glass-fronted bookcase without which no schoolroom is complete, and the battered gray-green and dark blue books without which no schoolroom bookcase is complete. On the walls were big pictures of the statues Mr. Saunders had found so interesting.

  Two of the desks were brown and old. Two were new and yellow with varnish. Gwendolen and Cat sat silently in the new desks. Julia hurried in, with her face shining from soap, and sat in the old desk beside Roger’s, and the grilling began. Mr. Saunders strode gawkily up and down in front of the blackboard, asking keen questions. His tweed jacket billowed out from his back, just as his coat had done in the wind. Perhaps that was why the sleeves of the jacket were so much too short for Mr. Saunders’ long arms. The long arm shot out, and a foot of bony wrist with a keen finger on the end of it pointed at Cat. “What part did witchcraft play in the Wars of the Roses?”

  “Er,” said Cat. “Ung. I’m afraid I haven’t done them yet, sir.”

  “Gwendolen,” said Mr. Saunders.

  “Oh—a very big part,” Gwendolen guessed airily.

  “Wrong,” said Mr. Saunders. “Roger.”

  From the grilling, it emerged that Roger and Julia had forgotten a great deal over the summer but, even so, they were well ahead of Cat in most things, and far ahead of Gwendolen in everything.

  “What did you learn at school?” Mr. Saunders asked her, in some exasperation.

  Gwendolen shrugged. “I’ve forgotten. It wasn’t interesting. I was concentrating on witchcraft, and I intend to go on doing that, please.”

  “I’m afraid you can’t,” said Mr. Saunders.

  Gwendo
len stared at him, hardly able to believe she had heard him right. “What!” she almost shrieked. “But—but I’m terribly talented! I have to go on with it!”

  “Your talents will keep,” said Mr. Saunders. “You can take up witchcraft again when you’ve learned something else. Open your arithmetic book and do me the first four exercises. Eric, I think I’ll set you going on some History. Write me an essay on the reign of King Canute.” He moved on to set work for Roger and Julia.

  Cat and Gwendolen opened books. Gwendolen’s face was red, then white. As Mr. Saunders bent over Roger, her inkwell sailed up out of the socket in her desk and emptied itself over the back of Mr. Saunders’ billowing tweed jacket. Cat bit his lip in order not to laugh. Julia watched with calm interest. Mr. Saunders did not seem to notice. The inkwell returned quietly to its socket.

  “Gwendolen,” said Mr. Saunders without turning around. “Get the ink jar and funnel out of the bottom of the cupboard and refill that inkwell. And fill it properly, please.”

  Gwendolen got up, jauntily and defiantly, found the big flask and funnel, and started to fill her inkwell. Ten minutes later, she was still pouring away. Her face was puzzled at first, then red, then white with fury again. She tried to put the flask down, and found she could not. She tried whispering a spell.

  Mr. Saunders turned and looked at her.

  “You’re being perfectly horrible!” said Gwendolen. “Besides, I’m allowed to do witchcraft when you’re here.”

  “No one is allowed to pour ink over their tutor,” Mr. Saunders said cheerfully. “And I’d already told you that you’ve given up witchcraft for the time being. Keep on pouring till I tell you to stop.”

  Gwendolen poured ink for the next half hour, and got angrier every minute of it.

  Cat was impressed. He suspected that Mr. Saunders was rather a powerful magician. Certainly, when he next looked at Mr. Saunders, there was no sign of any ink on his back. Cat looked at Mr. Saunders fairly often, to see whether it was safe to change his pen from his right to his left hand. He had been punished so often for writing left-handed that he was good at keeping an eye on his teachers. When Mr. Saunders turned his way, Cat used his right hand. It was slow and reluctant. But as soon as Mr. Saunders turned away again, Cat changed his pen over and got on like a house on fire. The main trouble was that, in order not to smudge the ink with his left hand, he had to hold the paper sideways. But he was pretty deft at flicking his book straight again whenever Mr. Saunders seemed likely to look at him.